To me, at least, it was a high mark episode. In
fact, I was a bit unnerved by it; the reasons still under “private
investigation” by me. The most obvious explanation might be that in our on-air
dialogue we were, publicly, discussing things I am “not allowed” by maternal parental
order not to acknowledge, particularly non-Jewish ideas. As it so happened on this show, all kinds of
blasphemy, according to this stricture, were touched upon as Jack and I considered the “changing times”
within which we are now living.
Somehow this on-air dialogue, heightened by the conference call forum that followed, led to an article I wrote
for the New Horizons’ Small “Zones of Peace” Project blog site. I titled it, “Life Is With People: A Memorial Day Reflection.”
While I am still unable to explain the connection
between that radio show broadcast and the article I just posted, I offer it to you, thinking you will appreciate it, even if the author, me, is
still unable to justify its viable presence here.
“Life
Is With People: A Memorial Day Reflection
“Life Is With People” is the title of a book on the dying culture of the shtetl;
its way of life, its practices and characteristic philosophies. The book was
introduced in 1952, with a commentary by Margaret Mead, the renowned
anthropologist. A shtetl is, or at least was, traditionally, an Eastern
European, Jewish village.
My mother was an assimilating,
Americanized shtetl Jew. She
grew up in the midst of folks who shared a common heritage; shtetl life was
central to their ways. Of course, it was not completely like the “old
country.” Still life among the Jews of Toledo, Ohio did revolve, as in Eastern
Europe, around the shul, an Orthodox house of worship.
Life in this community of
like-minded, shared culture, individuals and families, had a long-cherished
resonance to times past. Most notable, however, was that these people were safe
from the pogroms of the Czar and what was to come of Germany and the Third
Reich.
I have long treasured the
rather beaten up copy I have of the book. It brings me to wonder if I have kept
the words of the title close to my heart, only after finding it on a used book
shelf, or had they always been as though cellular to me. I doubt I will ever
know.
Well, no matter, now. The
title means the world to me. It strikes the deepest cords within me, reminding
me who I am and what matters most; a life shared with the people around me in
love and laughter, joy and sorrow.
From the earliest days of
my life, the experience of a closely-connected life with people was as familiar
as my skin; the people of my family and those of my community.
My people are shtetl
people. This is my history and my heritage. When I was not paying attention and
honoring this, I was cutting myself off from myself, as we all do when we do
not tend to our roots. This is simply a fact of human nature.
We are of something. We
become something more. But whatever it is that we are at our roots cannot and
will not ever be separate from who we are, now, and who and what we will
become.
Part of the heritage of
being Jewish is that you are, for better or for worse, a member of a tribe.
I remember, attending a
high school that must have been eighty-five percent Jewish, if not more. At the
time, an “in thing” was to refer to one another as “members of the tribe.” I
didn’t think much about the expression then. It was just simply what one said,
thought and, somehow, did. In short we were “MOTs” and proud of it. Later,
though, and up until the recent past half-dozen years, I didn’t like being a member
of that tribe. I wanted out.
So I proclaimed that I’d
quit being Jewish. People laughed at me for my idiocy. “You can’t quit being
Jewish,” they said. But I was certain I’d bought my freedom. From what I was
not quite certain.
Nonetheless, tribal life
and its implications came home to me the other day while I was picking
something up at a neighbor’s. Walking onto a nearby friend’s yard, I chanced
upon another neighbor, a Native American, as it happens. Seeing him standing
there in the sunshine I was struck by the beauty of the rich color of his
skin. Then, jokingly I asked, “Do you think I look as Jewish as you do
Native American?”
He chuckled and soon, as
friends and neighbors do, we went on to the next lighthearted chatter. Tribal
differences had not divided us.
Then, I heard, in the
distance, another friend of his, unknown to me, calling out. This was a
slightly accented voice of a male who turned out to be African American, from
Ghana.
Growing up as the
daughter of a die-hard shtetl Jew, as was my mother, I was not allowed to
interact with anyone who was not Jewish. Anyone not of my “tribe” could not
even be acknowledged as existing as a human, truth be told. Native Americans
were, seen only, as performing exhibitions at the annual Sportsman’s Show.
An African American would be our cleaning lady.
How very much this breaks
my heart when I reflect upon it.
But the times they area-changing. I am changing too. For one thing I have now answered my query, “Am
I an American Jew or a Jewish American?” Having resolved that “Yes, I am of
Jewish heritage, I accept that in me. And, that I am equally an American. I
hope I am never asked to choose between the two.
I have come to full voice
of where lies my heart and soul; all the peoples of the world are members of my
tribe. As it turns out, it was the separating from the rest of humanity that
had made being Jewish feel so wrong for me.
But that was long ago.
Today is the now. Still, if I allow my mind to travel, I am rather certain my
“othering” mother would have difficulty accepting this way of mine.
What she might say about
the joy and wholeness I find now in the varied array of people in my life I
will not even entertain. In attendance, presently, at our Possible Society In
Motion conversations forums and our bi-weekly Sohbet/study groups, I think we
have, at least, one or more, people of Irish descent, a South American, several
folks of German heritage and one person of mixed Bulgarian/Macedonian heritage;
none are Jewish, other than me.
So what?
On a day like today, Memorial Day, I am so
aware of the freedom I have to simply be me and an MOT of any tribe I choose. I
choose the global village as my tribe and the land of this free nation.
Hope your Memorial Day is as joyful and
celebratory for you as an American, as it is for me.
Anastasia,
Up in the mountains where Civil War soldiers
died for our freedoms
